On October 14 Christie's London brings together a Mondrian unseen in 25 years and a Kandinsky the Nazis forced its Jewish owners to sell in 1940.
On October 14, Christie's evening sale in London will bring together two paintings with very different histories. The first, Piet Mondrian's "Composition III" from 1920, has not been shown publicly in twenty-five years and will make its auction debut. It is one of only eight major canvases Mondrian painted in 1920, a pivotal year for his method; five of the others are held in museums, including Tate, MoMA and Amsterdam's Stedelijk. The painting, once owned by modernist architect Armand Bartos and his wife Celeste, carries an estimate of £20 to £30 million, the highest for a Mondrian at European auction since 2009, according to the auction house.
The second painting, Wassily Kandinsky's "Das bunte Leben" (The Colorful Life) from 1907, returns to the market after a long and difficult history. Dutch collectors Emanuel Lewenstein and his wife Hedwig acquired it in 1927. The work was on long-term loan to Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum, from where it was removed and sold at auction in October 1940, shortly after the German invasion of the Netherlands. Collector Salomon Slijper bought it, and in 1972 Bayerische Landesbank acquired it from his family. From 1973 it spent more than fifty years on long-term loan at the Lenbachhaus in Munich.
In 2017, the Lewenstein heirs filed a claim for the painting's return, and in June 2023 its restitution was legally secured. This sale marks the painting's first appearance on the market since being returned to the family. Its estimate is more than $30 million.
